What’s On! OCAF Client Events Across Ontario: August 10 – 24

Visit the Inaugural Huronia Arts Festival this weekend!

This weekend, join the Huronia Cultural Campus at the inaugural Huronia Arts Festival, with musicians, playwrights, authors, and artists coming together for a day of performances, conversations, and events.

Orillia’s Lakehead University campus will overflow with more than 100 artists of every genre for a fun-filled day. Created by the Huronia Cultural Campus Foundation, the Huronia Arts Festival aims to build a multi-disciplinary celebration of the arts, with guests like playwright Tomson Highway, author Terry Fallis, jazz fusion band MANTECA and many more performing throughout the day.

Tickets are only $25, and everyone under 16 can attend for free. For more information and a event schedule, head to the Huronia Arts Festival website!

Shakespeare is completely, irrovocably in love

The Stratford Festival is celebrating the 400th birthday of William Shakespeare with workshops, events, showcases and brand-new performances of Shakespeare plays and plays about Shakespeare. Shakespeare 400’s crown jewel is the brand new adaptation of Shakespeare in Love.

Based on the Oscar Award-winning film, Shakespeare in Love follows a fictionalized William Shakespeare, who is suffering from writer’s block while trying to finish his play Romeo and Juliet. When he meets Viola, a woman in disguise as a boy so that she can pursue acting, Shakespeare finds his muse…and a whole lot more!

“Romantic and boisterous” (Hamilton Spectator), Shakespeare in Love runs until October 16 in the Avon Theatre. For your tickets, head to the Stratford website!

Celebrate Jewish Arts and Music at Ashkenaz Festival

August 30 to September 5, Harbourfront Centre in Toronto will host more than 250 artists of all types at the Ashkenaz Festival. A festival celebrating global Jewish culture and the Yiddish language, the six-day festival will host performers and audiences for all over the world.

Produced biennially since 1995, the Ashkenaz Festival has evolved over the years into an eclectic showcase of global Jewish art and culture, as well as cross-cultural fusion with the many regions and cultures in which Jewish artists have flourished. This year, there will be theatrical performances, film screenings, workshops, food, and of course, music!

90% of the events and activities are free for everyone to enjoy – to see everything that’s happening between Aug 30 – Sep 5, click here!

Bloody Brilliant: Sweeney Todd at Shaw

Until October 19, enjoy the darkly comedic and hilariously unsettling musical thriller at Shaw that critics have declared “simply a masterpiece”!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opened in July to great acclaim. The dystopian musical follows Sweeney Todd, a barber with dark plans for revenge against the establishment that has wronged him and the people that have betrayed him. Steven Sondheim’s acclaimed musical has thrilled audiences for since 1979, winning nearly three dozen major awards and adapted as a hit film starring Johnny Depp in 2007.

Watch the video above for the 5th installment of The Razor’s Edge, a documentary produced by the Shaw Festival about the creation of this production. For tickets to the show, head to the Shaw Festival website!

Talk is Free Presents The Music Man

Music fever is about to hit Barrie, and only one musical production can cure it! Talk is Free Productions will be producing the classic musical The Music Man.

September 14 to October 2, the city of Barrie, Ontario will be transformed into River City, Iowa in this daring site-specific production of Meredith Wilson’s beloved tale. Audiences will be whisked across the city, following the tale of con artists Professor Harold Hill as he attempts to pull off the con of a lifetime!

Featuring a barbershop quartet and a full brass band in a cast of 60, Talk is Free’s production will be one of the largest-ever outdoor productions in Canada. To be part of history, click here for tickets!